Brittany Watts, 33, was charged after police searched her toilet following her miscarriage in September.
A Black woman in Ohio has been charged with a felony for abuse of a corpse after she miscarried into her toilet, according to a criminal complaint, and reproductive rights experts are warning that it could set a dangerous precedent if she is convicted.
The attorney for Brittany Watts and a campaign organized on her behalf called the charges against her unjust, saying they feared the case could open the door to similar prosecutions and lawsuits over miscarriages nationwide.
Just hours after Watts, 33, was admitted to a hospital for a life-threatening hemorrhage after she miscarried in her bathroom Sep. 22, police removed her toilet from her home and searched it for fetal remains, according to a GoFundMe set up to fund her legal expenses and home repairs.
“Ms. Watts suffered a tragic and dangerous miscarriage that jeopardized her own life. Rather than focusing on healing physically and emotionally, she was arrested and charged with a felony and is fighting for her freedom and reputation,” her attorney, Traci Timko, said in a statement.
police removed her toilet from her home and searched it
Everything about this is insane and exactly what sensible people thought would happen.
That’s what it took to get to the fetus and remove it. And they’re blaming her for not doing it. There she was with a partially retained placenta, in danger of bleeding out, and she had the nerve to leave her toilet intact in order to obtain timely life saving health care.
And don’t forget, she’d been to the hospital multiple times and left because she wasn’t receiving care…all hospital caregivers and ‘legal teams’ were too busy trying to figure out if they could legally remove a dead fetus; they wouldn’t do what needed to be done. Just left her sitting there while they argued intent of the law versus letter of the law.
“She put the fetus into the toilet.” No, she didn’t. The fetus was expelled into the toilet, along with bodily waste. She tried to get everything out, but she couldn’t.
“She then went about her day.” No, she didn’t. She went to the hospital. She was bleeding (probably heavily) due to part of the placenta being left attached.
That’s just two of the twisted statements the prosecutor has made in order to make this woman look like a heartless SOB.
It’s gone too far, and short of removing Republicans from office and justices from the court, I don’t know what we can do. They are prosecuting this woman to punish her for miscarrying in an inconvenient place.
It’s worth mentioning that just 11 days earlier, had her miscarriage happened at the hospital, it would have been disposed of as medical waste…incinerated. 11 freaking days, and the state is criminalizing her.
all hospital caregivers and ‘legal teams’ were too busy trying to figure out if they could legally remove a dead fetus
Source on that? Last I read, and funny how all the articles are regurgitating the same exact text a few days later, she checked herself out against medical advice. Twice.
Even the articles we can easily see today repeat that she was offered induced labor and follow up care, an abortion, and she walked away. Twice.
This isn’t a case of abortion law gone mad. It’s a case of a woman suffering hell and making poor choices.
tl;dr: The Texas case we’ve all heard about is madness. This one is too, but not over abortion laws. This one is prosecutorial overreach.
Even the articles we can easily see today repeat that she was offered induced labor and follow up care, an abortion, and she walked away. Twice.
That is a flat-out untruth. I posted this elsewhere in this thread, but just to be sure you see it:
Every single account I have read says she was in and out of the hospital miscarrying before she finally did at home, and then went back to the hospital afterward, where she was inpatient for days. She left the hospital because she wasn’t getting any help; they were all stuck on the new law while her body was unable to expel the fetus quickly. At NO point did they help her to expel it, or offer to do so. That’s why she kept going home.
December 15
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/12/15/ohio-woman-miscarriage-abuse-of-corpse-grand-jury/
Archive link: https://archive.is/2rSiE
December 16
https://apnews.com/article/ohio-miscarriage-prosecution-brittany-watts-b8090abfb5994b8a23457b80cf3f27ce
December 19
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/19/us/brittany-watts-miscarriage-criminal-charge/index.html
From WaPo, linked above:
Brittany Watts was still hooked to an IV, sick for almost a week from a potentially fatal miscarriage, when a detective from the Warren Police Department in Ohio stepped into her hospital room. He assured her that she wasn’t in any trouble.
For more than an hour, Detective Nick Carney interviewed Watts, 33, about the details of that morning and the whereabouts of the nearly 22-week-old fetus that was declared nonviable two days earlier. As Watts described miscarrying in her bathroom, a nurse at Mercy Health — St. Joseph Warren Hospital rubbed her shoulders and told her everything would be okay, Watts told The Washington Post in a series of text messages. Two weeks later, Carney arrested Watts on charges of felony abuse of a corpse for how she handled the remains from her pregnancy. If indicted and found guilty, she faces up to a year in prison along with a fine of up to $2,500, her lawyer said.
To describe Watts’s experience, The Washington Post reviewed police reports, call recordings and more than 600 pages of medical records, interviewed her lawyer, and spoke to Watts via text message. (emphasis mine)
Again, you don’t need to make anything up. If you find yourself having to lie, maybe your point is not as worthy as you think it is.
